In spite of the scars

Like many people, I tend to carry scars from my life's more intense experiences, both good and bad. The physical scars accumulate on my arms and legs — pink, sensitive spots that hurt every time I whack them, and take longer and longer to heal every time another crash opens them anew (my poor right elbow is such a mess.)

The emotional scars are similar; I can trace an my ongoing fear of water all the way back to visceral memories of a misguided wander into "Amazing Mumford's Water Maze" at Sesame Place in Texas, at the age of 3. My latest addition to the irrational fear basket is snow slides. Last weekend, when Beat and I went hiking through the rapidly melting snow around Walker Ranch, I became startled by snow sloughing of the rocks and had a real panic reaction — heart racing, nervous shivering, eyes darting around. It's annoying enough that I can't deal with putting my face under water or riding in small boats; now I'm afraid of the most benign instances of falling snow?

Then there are the scars that aren't really fears, just unpleasant associations. Near the top of this list are memories of the 2015 Tour Divide. Whether the association is rational or not, on an emotional level, I blame my health issues on this specific experience. The short of it is that I came down with bronchitis during the race, and pushed through it anyway for two weeks as I became increasingly more ill. After that, it was as though a switch flipped. My body was different. Even before I understood that I have an autoimmune disorder — which are thought to be sometimes triggered by assaults on the immune system — I felt the Tour Divide was a sharp line between the changes in my health. Of course many things about my lifestyle and genetics could have made the difference, and it isn't rational to pin everything that's happened since on a single event. Regardless, the anger is here to stay.

Now I imagine grinding along those mountain roads, and viscerally feel as though I'm choking on dust, and my head weighs a thousand pounds, and I stare blankly toward beautiful horizons, only see a bleak kind of vacuousness. I recently realized that these poor associations with the Tour Divide have made me less inclined toward what is objectively one of my favorite things in the world — riding my bicycle through scenic landscapes.

I thought about this strange association as I suited up to go for a ride on Thursday, my first in nearly two weeks. Earlier in the week, my excuse for bike avoidance was my left knee, which was still stiff from the previous week's crash. It had taken about this long to achieve full range of motion without pain. Of course I ran 16 miles through mud and slush and a lot of downhill on Monday, and my knee was fine then. But still I didn't want to ride my bike. Weird.

However, I made a commitment to meet Beat after work, and mapped out an intriguing new route on forest roads above Nederland. The forest roads were still too covered in snow to do much more than stumble along at 0.5 mph as my shins were cut by icy slush (and I only bothered to do this for ten minutes, mainly out of desire to cool my feet and sunburned legs.) For the rest of the ride, I felt strong. Really strong. I mashed the pedals up Caribou Road with sweat pouring down my back and lungs full of fire. I'm still afraid to push truly hard — bad associations with asthma attacks that may take a while to diminish yet. But wow, I felt incredible.

Perhaps I don't have to be scarred for life by the 2015 Tour Divide. Perhaps I can even go back to that route someday, and restore the wonderful experiences of 2009. Perhaps Beat's insistence that it's possible to manage Grave's Disease and "make Jill great again" holds some weight.

Or maybe it was just a good ride amid the ongoing, body-and-mind-thrashing rollercoaster that is life. I'll take it. It reminded me of the lyrics from "Home" by Field Report:

"The body remembers what your mind forgets. 
Archives every heartbreak and cigarette. 
And these reset bones might not hold.
Yeah, but they might yet."

This really is post 2,000

If this blog were a child it would be in middle school right now, so it's probably not surprising that it has managed to amass 2,000 posts. But it seems like a milestone worth noting. Every once in a while I start typing in this space and ponder what it is, after all these years, I'm still trying to accomplish. The reasons I started the blog — to post photos, to connect with people online, to keep in touch with family and friends — all fall into the realm of social media now. I still enjoy writing long-winded (we journalists like to use the phrase "long-form") adventure reports, so I'm unlikely to dump the blog anytime soon (at least not before its high school graduation.) And I do need a place to post photos, because I will never join Instragram, never never, don't ask me again. 

Interesting, I've recently received a steady stream of requests from random PR people for gear reviews, sponsored posts, even a junket or two. I'm at a loss for why these started now, when this blog  has never been a gear blog, is far less popular than it was eight years ago, and the medium in general is about five years dead. "Jill Outside" must have ended up on some type of marketing list. Although I have to say no, I find it amusing nonetheless. This just isn't a commercial blog.

(Also, buy my books.) 

 This weekend, most of the Front Range was slammed by a frigid storm that raged for much of Friday and Saturday. Because it's so late in April, everyone treated the snow like an anomaly, but I have Facebook's "On This Day" feature to remind me otherwise. This storm was reminiscent of our first week in Boulder, except for we now have actual furniture to snuggle into, and a huge stack of firewood in the garage (last April we scrambled to chop downfall in the yard.) Yes, it's just Colorado's boring-old, annual, "Nearly May Blizzard."

My fatigue rollercoaster, thyroid or whatever it maybe, has been on the upswing. I felt much more perky than I had earlier in the week. The only annoyance was my left knee, which I had so graciously slammed into a rock on Wednesday. After the crash, an odd goose egg rose out of the top of my kneecap, which had also been scrubbed of its skin. The whole joint was painful and didn't want to bend much, so I didn't bother bending it for a couple of days. I limped into my allergy clinic, and when the nurse saw my right arm — which also lost a fair amount of skin — she asked, "What happened to you?"

"I fell," I said with the upmost derision. "I tripped over a rock, and I went down." Then, to emphasize how disgusted I was with myself, added, "I don't take my falls so well. I'm not 20 anymore" ... forgetting, conveniently, that I earned the nickname "Gimpy McStiff" in my early 20s precisely because I couldn't take a fall then, either.

 I also remembered advice from my mom, which she repeated the many times I bashed my knee as a clumsy little kid — "If you don't bend it now, it's never going to bend."

"But it hurts."

"Well, it's going to keep hurting until you bend it. Now try."

On Saturday, as temperatures plunged into the low 20s, fierce wind and snow raged through thick fog, and more than a foot of snow covered the ground, I decided it was as good of a time as any to try.

 It was 23 degrees when Beat and I set out in the late afternoon for the usual route to Bear Peak. This is the most snow I've seen up there yet — despite climbing Bear well over a dozen times during the winter — and it's always fun to view the familiar in such drastically different light. I was limping, but as expected the swollen knee began to loosen up as we slogged our way up the snow-covered road. I put my snowshoes on to hike through the deeper snow on the trail. Beat did not; it was the only reason I was mostly able to keep up with him.

 The scenery just got better as we climbed, where the burned forest was covered in hoarfrost.

 Thick hoar near the summit.

 An eerie apparition of Bear Peak.

 Beat on the rime-coated rocks. The wind was howling and I'd guess the windchill was zero degrees, at best. It was quite the exciting place to visit on April 29. It felt like we were standing atop a jagged 4,000-meter summit in the Alps, not lowly Bear Peak.

 My knee took a bit of a beating while making the hard bends necessary to complete the steep, snowy climb, so I was rather grumpy during the descent. I was definitely in pain. But at some point you have to decide if something is "valid" pain — as in the kind of pain that warns you injury is inevitable — or "erroneous" pain — as in the kind of pain your mother told you to ignore, lest your knee lock up and never bend again. I decided it was probably the latter.

 According to the closest official measuring station, 14.5" of snow fell in our neighborhood during this storm. Despite the colder temperatures, it was heavy, wet spring snow, so there's a lot of water ready to soak into the grass over the next two days. This is good news for the fire season, although if we don't continue to see spring rain, it's going to be a long summer yet.

 After the hummingbird feeder froze solid, Beat brought it inside. On Sunday morning, he made new sugar water and returned it to the balcony. Since it's so early in the spring, we currently just have a pair of hummingbirds, a male and a female — as far as we can tell. But the two of them attacked the feeder the moment it was back. They didn't even wait for us to leave. I wondered where those tiny birds went to sit out that storm. Wherever it was, they sure did come home hungry.

 My knee wasn't much better on Sunday, but it wasn't worse either, so I set out to hike the Walker Ranch loop while Beat ran. I figured a foot of new snow that was rapidly turning to slush meant that neither of us would be breaking any speed records.

 I was rather grateful for the slush, as it necessitated a slow pace whether my knee was working or not. Still heavy, shin-deep snow requires some hard maneuvering. My knee will bend when I make it bend, but it's definitely not the happiest knee.

Despite the soreness, I was stoked to just be outside and moving through the world. Mid-morning bliss.


Mule deer were out and about, nibbling on all the fresh greens. The resident elk herd also bedded down near this spot last night, leaving behind an impressive mess. It was strange to see these signs of spring, even though they've been around for a while.

 My favorite view from Walker, looking through the window of Eldorado Canyon toward Denver. After 3.5 hours of knee-raising marches and trudging to cover 9.5 miles, my knee had loosened significantly and I felt no pain. But it only took five minutes of sitting to stiffen up again. I think the lesson here is to just keep walking. 

Another crash

My physical self has become a stranger to me recently; I don't really "know" my body anymore. I've mentioned the energy rollercoaster, the good days and bad, not quite knowing how much of this is adjusting to thyroid medications, how much is fluctuations of hormones, how much is psychosomatic, how much is just "me."

On one hand, I've struggled with real fatigue — feeling more sluggish in my daily routine, blinking against sleepiness at 3 p.m., sneaking off to take actual naps, and setting an alarm so I don't pass out for hours. This happens despite full nights of sleep and better morning alertness. I've learned that if I want to accomplish something mentally taxing, I'm better off attempting it before lunch. Jill one year ago would give a side-eye to this zonked-out person I'm becoming.

There have been other symptoms that one might ascribe to an underactive thyroid — I'm often cold in the afternoon and have to wrap up in my down comforter, as the thin couch blankets just don't cut it anymore. My fingernails are effectively falling apart, my skin is even drier than usual, and I've started noticing a bit more hair loss than before (not significant enough to worry yet.) Still, the numbers from April 11 wouldn't indicate hypothyroidism, so I have to assume this is just part of the adjustment.

On the other hand, I'm becoming stronger. Three weeks ago, I started back at square one with twice-weekly weightlifting, and I'm already ahead of where I was after four months of focused training over the winter. And I'm much more energetic when I'm in "active" mode. If I want to battle the afternoon sleepiness (and I've managed to resist the temptation to take a nap), all I need to do is go outside and start running or riding. On Monday I enjoyed a relaxing yet strenuous five-hour, nearly-50-mile mountain bike ride through the foothills. On Tuesday I stole an hour-long window between hail and snowstorms to jaunt up and down a 10K dirt road run with 1,100 feet of climbing. Running downhill through shoe-sucking mud, I managed to kick it up to that low-seven-minute-mile pace that feels so exhilarating. I could not run like that two months ago. No way. I would have been a gasping, dizzy, mucousy mess.

On Wednesday, overnight snow gave way to blazing sunshine. I had things to do in town, so I set out for a quick morning jaunt up Sanitas. My new thing with the steep ascent of Sanitas is to vie for new PRs in "all-hiking" mode, and see if I can keep up with runners in the process. (I've come close.) A friend had just sent me a nearly new pair of Altra Olympus shoes in the mail, and I was trying them out. After the breezy ascent (new PR! 26 minutes), I started down the winding, runnable descent feeling particularly light on my feet. Seven-minute-miles were fresh in my memory, and I picked up the pace to something just fast enough to necessitate total focus.

What happened next might seem inevitable to those who know me, but it all happened in such a strange fashion. I put my left foot down and something didn't feel right, causing me to lurch forward with my right foot and catch my toes on a rock. The terrain was a rock garden on a nearly level section of trail, so there was nowhere to roll, although I'm sure more graceful folks would have managed this. Of course I went down like a dead fish, slapping the rocks hard, really hard, and tearing up my right elbow and left knee in the process. Blood was gushing down my arm and leg as I crawled several meters off the trail into a cluster of trees, as I'm always terribly embarrassed when I fall and hope no one will see me. Then I curled up into a fetal position, writhed, and hyperventilated for at least five minutes, because I was in quite a lot of pain.

After I started to come around, I fished through my backpack for wet wipes, finding six (lucky break; I needed all of them just to slow the bleeding.) Instead of continuing in the direction I was heading, which would have necessitated a four-mile hike, I turned to limp back down the mile-long steep part. This proved incredibly taxing. Some trail runners seem to bounce right back from their crashes, but I am not one of those. Perhaps it's my dead fish landing technique, but I felt like I had been hit by a car. I managed the steepest parts by effectively crawling backward, trying to avoid putting any weight on my left leg, although that was unavoidable. The descent took 75 minutes (contrast that to 26 minutes of climbing.) My face was scrunched up in pain, my joints were still gushing blood, and it was just misery. I'm somewhat familiar with this state — the curse of a clumsy person who both doesn't get better and doesn't give up — but that never makes it any easier.

Now I sit at home on an early Thursday afternoon, with the afternoon brain fog beginning to seep in, and too sore to do much about it. Maybe happily, the rain is pelting down outside, and I can still curl up in my down comforter and attempt a blog post to see if that jogs the creative energy. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.